You Left a Stain Upon My Heart
by clotpolesforever
Summary: Me, being a ridiculous procrastinator, mostly because my muse refuses to cooperate in a timely fashion. Have fun! Rated T because of children watching other children die.


**A/N: Soulmate AUs for the Merlin fandom, based on a post I saw on Pinterest, here:** **pin/AXBMx45RMo8CkKOE8rtCupZRjL9MyjdVGGt407j5dKYuLXUVjYHHgDI/** **Enjoy! Shall contain angst, polyamory, homosexuals, OCs, and more angst. Ye be warned. Procrastination level on working on my other stories: Cuban Missile Crisis.**

 **I: Uther.**

Uther's mark was on his right hand, in the shape of a lady's slender fingers. When he held Ygraine's hand for the first time, the black marks bloomed into a glory of pale blues and purples and fiery red. (Ygraine's colors were many shades of blue, curling over her fingers.) When he held her hand for the last time, watching the life drain from her blue eyes, those colors bloomed in reverse. He wept and raged until the blood of dragons and men coated his hands, the same blues and reds. In the dying light at dusk, the blood sometimes even looked purple. When he was calmer, he was a haunted man. He never went without gloves again until the day he died, and the blood of dragons and men claimed him in a far gentler embrace than he felt he had any right to receive.

 **II: Hunith.**

Hunith's mother had told her that she would marry a boy from her village, because only a man who was familiar with her would put an arm around her shoulders. Hunith's mother had no answer for why her palms and left arm would be stained black as well. When Hunith came upon the injured man lying in the mud during a heavy rain, she thought nothing of putting his arm around her shoulders, one hand on his wrist, the other grasping his side. It was the necessary action to get him inside her house, after all. She thought nothing of it until she saw the riot of gold and maroon and hints of vibrant turquoise swirling across her palms and up her left arm to spill over her shoulders. When she divested the injured man of his shirt to check his wounds, she was pleased to find a myriad of greens and browns and the odd bit of lilac striping his arm and back, an incongruous splash of furious violet-red-grey on his left hip. Hunith wondered what her mother would have thought upon learning that her daughter did not even know the man's name.

 **III: Gaius.**

Alice's colors on his knuckles, from where he had brushed her hand in passing, hadn't shown until he was nearly fifty. It was then that he realized that, for the both of them being physicians and healers, they'd never actually touched. He felt slightly ridiculous for it. When the Purge began, he was determined to save her. To save what they might have been. And when she returned, well, he ignored the pain flickering beneath his soul-stained skin that insisted his love had turned to the darkest sorceries, because she was _here_ and she _still loved him_ and that was all that mattered. He helped Merlin to save her again, without hesitation. And when the colors drained from his skin months later, he mourned his Alice. But most of all, he mourned the things that might have been.

 **IV: Leon.**

Leon's mark had been a handprint on his chest since the day he was born. It had been a reddened scar like a burn since he was eight, when the Purge moved to the outlying villages. He tells no one, but he gets a strange feeling whenever he comes near a druid encampment. A feeling almost like coming home, but bittersweet, as though the home is no longer there, or is greatly changed.

When the druids heal him with the Cup of Life, Iseldir tells him of a young boy named Dafydd, a Vates, who was convinced his beloved wore Pendragon red. Iseldir tells him that Dafydd had wine-red hair and masses of freckles all over his pale-caramel skin. Iseldir tells him that Dafydd had light green eyes, and a kind and fiercely loyal heart. (Leon thinks they'd would've done well together. He'll never know for sure now.) When Uther had him burned, he locked eyes on a tow-headed boy named Leon. The face of his beloved was the last thing he would ever see. Leon remembers him, recalling that he'd been horrified that someone would smile so widely as the flames leapt higher, as tears streamed down his young face. The boy hadn't stopped smiling, and his charred corpse had born that rictus grin even as Leon had buried him beneath a rowan tree in the dead of night.

He tells no one, but he leaves gifts of flowers-always asphodel or larkspurs- beside the half-overgrown cairn beneath a rowan tree every year for the rest of his life. Always on the same day, too. Their meeting-day.

He tells no one, but sometimes he has dreams of a man-his lost Dafydd-with wine-red hair and pale-green eyes. He is proud of and delighted to be with Leon. The man has a druid symbol tattooed on his chest with a golden coil inlaid upon it. The soul-mark on his palm is Pendragon red with a touch of lime, the one on Leon's chest is a swirl of magenta and molten gold. Sometimes, the man is teaching a little boy with masses of freckles and apricot-colored curls to read using a system of raised dots, the child's hand covered with Dafydd's much larger one, skimming the parchment with a touch light as butterfly's wings. Other times, the man is laughing as he swings a red-headed girl into his arms, baby's breath spilling from her fingers with a flash of her grey eyes turned gold. The boy, Leon is certain, would have been named Anarawd, the girl would be Branwen, orphans that happen to look like their second set of parents. He wakes with tears in his eyes and a bittersweet rictus grin on his face. The dreams are all that he has of his long-lost beloved, and they are good, and will have to be enough.

 **V: Percival.**

When the other knights see the swath of black on the right side of his chest, they assume that he hasn't met his soulmate yet. Percival smiles, and says nothing, and lets them assume the kinder explanation. He never tells them of his sweet, beautiful, fierce Aerona. He never tells them how the girl who was born without a left hand still managed to beat him whenever they made a race of climbing trees. He never tells them of her riotous black curls that smelled of woodsmoke and moss, or of her night-dark skin that looked almost blue at twilight, her white teeth flashing as she laughed. He never tells them how she was the one who taught him to wield a sword, or that she insisted he wear only sleeveless tunics because she liked the way he looked in them. He never tells them of the poppy-red-orange curling down her left shoulder from when she smacked into him when they were both five. He never tells them of the deep plum and blueberry coating his chest. He never tells them of Cenred's soldiers, of fire and vengeance and _loss_. (He does speak of her to Merlin, though, because the silence becomes too painful one night. When he does, he notices the sad smile the younger man gives him, the blue of his eyes looking like so much broken glass as he rubs his black-stained, soul-stained hands together, as he says softly, "yeah, I know how that feels.")

Percival smiles, and says nothing, and says nothing, and lets them assume the kinder explanation.

 **A/N: Ta-da!**


End file.
